Two days ago I peeked into Global Trade Watch to see if they had any new information on the ugly trade deals under negotiation, and I found they had a couple potentially important items.One they’d named ‘Pressure Pays Off: Obama Administration FinallyLets Congress See Secretive TPP Text (But Still Not the Rest of Us)’.Well, I clicked their links, and one that mentioned you went to a HuffPo piece.It turns out that what the author means by‘Congress’ really amounted to Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) finally being allowed by the US Trade Representative to see three chapters of the text.This Great Gift by the USTR (US Trade Representative) followed a burgeoning chorus of Congresss-Critters (whose collective national approval rating of Congress being 10% in recent polls) hollering for transparency and many petitions and Congressional letters to the White House, not to mention your own ‘successful’ petition to the USTR.

‘Corporate representatives account for about 500 of the “cleared advisors” on those panels, while representatives of organized labor, environmental and other groups account for about 100 others. These cleared advisers are not permitted to discuss provisions with the press or the public.’

We don’t know how truthful or accurate those numbers are, of course, or what value the point of having silenced limited observers comprising the ‘about 100 others’ amounts to.But I digress.

After speaking of the Obomba administration closely guarding the full negotiation text and prohibiting members of Congress from discussing the specific terms of the text with trade experts and reporters, he quoted you as saying:

“This, more than anything, shows the abuse of the classified information system,” Grayson told HuffPost. “They maintain that the text is classified information. And I get clearance because I’m a member of Congress, but now they tell me that they don’t want me to talk to anybody about it because if I did, I’d be releasing classified information.”

A few questions occur to me, Congressman.Your email used a graphic saying: ‘Classified Top Secret’; were the documents you read classified as such?Do you mean that you weren’t warned of that restriction before you read what text you did?You indicate that it was so.Then after saying that what you’d seen ‘was nothing that could possibly justify the secrecy that surrounds it’, you were also quoted as saying:

“Having seen what I’ve seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty,” Grayson told HuffPost. “And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that’s fair to say from what I’ve seen so far. But I’m not allowed to tell you why!“

Curious about all this, I trudged over to your Congressional website and saw no mention of your having seen any of the TPP text in a quick search, so I Giggled to see who else might have more, and found your ‘email tumbler account’, Rep. Grayson .In an entry you named: ‘I Saw the Secret Trade Deal’, by which you were referring to the secret negotiated-in-progress Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.You rather humbly thanked the 10,000 people who had signed your petition to the USTR for the victory that was granted you, then:

“We asked that the government not sell out our democracy to corporate interests.

Because of this pressure, the USTR finally let a member of Congress – little ole me, Alan Grayson – actually see the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP is a large, secret trade agreement that is being negotiated with many countries in East Asia and South America.

The TPP is nicknamed “NAFTA on steroids.” Now that I’ve read it, I can see why. I can’t tell you what’s in the agreement, because the U.S. Trade Representative calls it classified. But I can tell you two things about it.

1) There is no national security purpose in keeping this text secret. 2) This agreement hands the sovereignty of our country over to corporate interests. 3) What they can’t afford to tell the American public is that [the rest of this sentence is classified]. (Well, I did promise to tell you only two things about it.)

I will be fighting this agreement with everything I’ve got. And I know you’ll be there every step of the way. [snip] True Blue Democrats. Get ready. We’re coming.” (then ‘Courage’, and your signature)

I’d like to offer the following for your consideration…

First, you said it was ‘a punch in the gut to the middleclass of American’; I’d ask you to consider the poor Americans as well; somehow the burgeoning underclass is always invisible to politicians, even though based on wage figures, half of Americans are in or near poverty now.‘Little ole you’ might want to consider their/our plight in your rhetoric.

For many Democrats, you have been an iconic champion of The People.You write heady posts using the words of great moral activists, as in MLK’s ‘Letter from Birmingham jail’ and so forth.Whether or not I share their respect and hope for you is immaterial as I write this.But what I’d ask you, and especially given the many interviews you’ve given recently, angrily denouncing the NSA as per Edward Snowden’s revelations is:

What trouble do you imagine for yourself if you were to go public with what you saw in the TPP language (including which chapters you asked to see), and can you imagine that given what you’ve said about those buts amounting to ‘a gross abrogation of American sovereignty’, *and* knowing well that unless we stop this in its tracks, much of the world’s 99% will be severely negatively impacted in so many hideous directions by this ‘agreement’ as well as TAFTA: Why don’t you speak up, Congressman?I can’t imagine that you haven’t imagined yourself in the Oval Office one day, or if not, that you’ve seen yourself celebrated as ‘a hero of the People’ or something.Could these trade deals in aid of multinational maximum profit and control *coupled’ with the investor-state ‘tribunals’ being able to prove damages by virtue of our, or any nation’s regulations…be construed as ‘treasonous’?Lori Wallach of Global Trade Watch seems to think that diluting just that investor-state language would be a major victory; I do not.

Is this not crunch time for the global 99% and the planet in so many directions?And are these crap trade deals not ‘game over’ for us if they pass into statutory form as predicted?

In closing, please allow yourself to imagine that you risk some trouble, and speak truth to power, Congressman:Tell the nation what you saw!Don’t just use all this as a fund-raising device.Please!

Lori Wallach and others believe that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) or Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) is in trouble due to the information Edward Snowden has revealed on NSA spying and hacking.She lists some of the concerns various EU nations have, and there may be indications that this deal isn’t expected to accommodate side deals, as have some of the other ‘free trade’ agreements.My cynical side says that they’ll work things out, as there’s plenty of good money to be made…and the Elites are pushing it hard; most stories in the news are waxing about the positive sides, ignoring the negatives, of course.I’d love to be proven wrong, of course, but who can say to what use any of the information and ability to listen, threaten, hack computers might be used as a hammer? And the US could cut some side deals, despite the ‘all or nothing’ language. This piece at Bloomberg must be the shallow end of the Corporate Information Sharing pond.But back to the public disinformation, is this from Ireland at the opening of the G-8 conference:

This page at the US Trade Representative’s website (ustr.gov) shorthands what he and Oboma say about the agreement’s effects.

The incredible inclusion of the investor-state disptue settlement regime in TAFTA was first revealed when the German blog Netzpolitik leaked the EU Council’s mandate to the European Commission to negotiate the deal. This extreme system empowers corporations to circumvent domestic court systems and directly challenge a government’s public interest laws before a three-person, extrajudicial tribunal if the corporations feel the laws affect their ability to make a profit. Corporations have already used the system to attack a slew of environmental and health policies, resulting in tribunal orders for taxpayers to pay more than $3.5 billion to foreign corporations under U.S. trade and investment deals alone.

The report outlines the lobbying efforts of corporations advocating for the inclusion of investor privileges in the agreement. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a statement to USTR that the investment chapter of the U.S.–EU trade pact should serve as “the ‘gold standard’ for other investment agreements.” Chevron has requested that TAFTA require governments to fulfill foreign investors’ “expectations” and that such investor privileges cover “both existing and future investments.” Chevron is intimately familiar with the investor-state system, having launched an investor-state case against Ecuador to avoid paying the $18 billion that Ecuadorian courts have ordered the company to hand over to clean up its mass-contamination of the Amazonian rainforest.

Leaked draft versions of the EU negotiating mandate for a far-reaching free trade agreement with the US – to be approved at next week’s trade minister meeting (14 June) – reveal the European Commission’s plans to enshrine more powers for corporations in the deal. The proposal follows a persistent campaign by industry lobby groups and law firms to empower large companies to challenge regulations both at home and abroad if they affect their profits. As a result, EU member states could soon find domestic laws to protect the public interest challenged in secretive, offshore tribunals where national laws have no weight and politicians no powers to intervene.

The Commission’s proposal for investor-state dispute settlement under the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)1 would enable US companies investing in Europe to skirt European courts and directly challenge EU governments at international tribunals, whenever they find that laws in the area of public health, environmental or social protection interfere with their profits. EU companies investing abroad would have the same privilege in the US.

Across the world, big business has already used investor-state dispute settlement provisions in trade and investment agreements to claim dizzying sums in compensation against democratically-made laws to protect the public interest (see Box 1). Sometimes the mere threat of a claim or its submission have been enough for legislation to be abandoned or watered down. In other cases tribunals – ad hoc three-member panels hired from a small club of private lawyers riddled with conflicts of interest – have granted billions of Euros to companies, paid out of taxpayers’ pockets.

On June 9, Lori Wallach of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch discussed her new book, The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority during an FDL Book Salon.

Here’s Matt Yglesias at Slate who says ‘The biggest trade deal of all time is being negotiated and nobody’s paying attention’.

This link will take you the Public Citizen’s signup page for weekly email notifications of highlights of their blogs.

“He’s very smart, he’s very tough, he’s the right person for the job as the United States begins to negotiate trade agreements with Asia, the so-called TPP, as well as trade agreements with the Europeans,” said the Senate Finance Committee chairman, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, in support of Mr. Froman.

Mr. Froman worked as Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin’s chief of staff during the Clinton administration,

He was a managing partner at Citigroup and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations before joining the Obama administration.

Alan has clearly “gone” so far as Alan’s sense of political self-preservation may allow him to comfortably “go” … on many levels.

He now awaits the adoring masses to huddle ’round his wise, creative leadership, safely moored, as he is, in the calm, no-waves-allowed-harbor of the political party whose hood ornament is a jackass.

While breathing quite heavily, Alan has recognized the flaws in the “methodology of implementation (secrecy, corporate supremacy, “jab to the gut” etc.) while not once expressing any discernible disgust with his party’s leader’s roles, for some years, in contriving to set up this “situation”. Grayson seems totally unable to “follow the money”, and unwilling to seriously challenge the PTB.

Some may call that cowardly whist others will note Grayson’s political acumen in realizing that daring to challenge the entrenched masters is suicidal, both politically and in terms of bountiful “remuneration” after one’s days of sacrifice to public service are over.

The one thing Alan Grayson will be most circumspect and cautious about is loosing any skin off his own jackass.

Alan is prepared to risk damned little, personally …

And I simply can’t shake the sense that he regards the rest of us as simply cheering extras … you know, the faceless, nameless crowds joyfully shouting his name as he basks in the manner to which he is accustomed to dreaming about … Now, in that, he is no different from any number of the run-of-the-mill politicians, and as yet, not nearly so complacent and demonstrating the most appalling in ALL of the of senses of entitlement displayed by those at the tip-top of the jackass party …which, for all practical intents and purposes is an exact mirror-image of those at the tip-top of the pachyderm party…

I wonder how many citizens still imagine that we are going to somehow “vote” ourselves of of this mess?

I mean with Alan Grayson, a self-professed Profile in Courage, amid the self-serving rhetoric of those at the tip-top of Everything, all ripping off anything not welded to the floor while pissing on the Constitution and making mock of the Rule of Law.

Secret?

Indeed!

Unadulterated horse shit.

Pure and simple.

Anyhoo, more power to ye, wendy.

Give them what deserve it, hell, as you seek to preserve what should be humanity’s heaven on earth, this paradise which daily we trample under our feet and ignore to our own dire and direct peril.

Welcome, sweetie, lol. And…you’ve just co-signed it. Think we can whistle the Congressman in? Are his aides reading here when they don’t have a post up in his name? We can hope so… ;~) We are told the White House monitors the place, or at least used to.

Good griefers, thank you, openhope. Cronus Brainus Fartus, it was, so hard was I intent on remembering *Froman’s* first name. And here I’d been objecting to the fact that his detractors called him ‘Ed’, thereby conferring his status as an uneducated man, or else…a Horse.

Please: if any of you ever see mistakes, let me know. I lost my editor a year or so ago. Mr.wd reads when he gets home, but that’s far too late. (And I detest reading what I write after the fact, so…)

Too many gems in your comment, my friend, but I might have to go with these as faves: ‘…skin off his own jackass’ and

‘And I simply can’t shake the sense that he regards the rest of us as simply cheering extras … you know, the faceless, nameless crowds joyfully shouting his name as he basks in the manner to which he is accustomed to dreaming about … Now, in that, he is no different from any number of the run-of-the-mill politicians, and as yet, not nearly so complacent and demonstrating the most appalling in ALL of the of senses of entitlement displayed by those at the tip-top of the jackass party …which, for all practical intents and purposes is an exact mirror-image of those at the tip-top of the pachyderm party…’

I’d add that I am fucking sick of politicians invoking ‘the middle class’ as though they read the Playbook, and know that’s exactly who they are appealing to, while forgetting that the vaunted ‘middle class’ is no longer extant…due to *their* policies, tax code, wars, and tra la la.

Excellent, juliania, and so is the old October2011 group, now renamed ‘popular resistance‘.

I wish they’d said how they mean to make their voices heard. I don’t see, barring a true social and political revolution, we can turn so many of these issues around…

@ DW : …which issue you brought up concerning fixing things by…voting. Would that a No Vote movement had begun already, so that adherent might swell the numbers and indicate that massive numbers of us disenfranchised…might gain some power, just by being there.

The managerial class, corporate, political, and so on, has failed to fulfill its obligation to society. Its failure has been substantive and spectacular.

Yet, oddly enough, that managerial class has enriched itself obscenely in the process of the “failure” … so, it is not really “failure” but deliberate plunder and pillage, it was neither accidental nor unforseen.

Some may “hope” that what we have may be “saved” or “fixed”.

I consider it quite “fixed” beyond meaningful salvation.

So, we shall, eventually, have to pick up the pieces and start anew.

My hope is that we might begin to discuss what foundational principles are necessary to such rebuilding, if it is to be successful in human and planetary terms.

Then, as TD and I have briefly tossed about, in short order, practical solutions to real problems, like hunger and homelessness all will have to be addressed along the way, starting now, if we are wise, as from the solutions will arise different notions of sustainable methods and the production a actual, and useful, “wealth” … a “common-wealth” that must be perceived and PROTECTED as such.

In the meantime, and it will be, we may rest assured that the political class will adapt to any “new normal”, any diminishment in the quality of life, even the length of life, for the many, with assured aplomb and jaunty style … the kubuki will on, the violence will go on, the theft will go on … until the whole thing collapses.

The managerial class is playing “end-game”. I suggest we plan pick up the pieces and all that such a reality entails.

While I realize that many are not prepared to go “there” … it all depends on the meaning of “there” …

I can only hope that Grayson copy/pastes and republishes some of your letter, especially your unique spelling of Barry’s surname (but not where you left out a ‘b’ further down).

Sorry to disrupt with a thought experiment: Would you be willing to accept at the present time the full, classified TPP text, to read, but with having to sign the oath to keep it classified? If so, would you violate the oath and publish it with the understanding that you would be prosecuted and — here’s the real rub — be prevented from ever being able to write your superior diaries and such for us to read?

I do appreciate you bouncing back to actual factual reality, whatever that is, DW. But part of what we face IS along Levine’s theme that the members of the political class manage to be two beings at the same time: one they pretend to be, and one…they vote as, rule as, snoop as…make endless war as.

We wait (and write and pray and send vibes of awareness and higher consciousness) to spur on the Great Awakening so many have predicted is on the verge of being realized. For that, of course, is what will make a nonviolent revolution not only possible, but will aid in the recreation of the nation.

Yes, so many Occupiers and other good offshoots of the Democracy Movement are working diligently behind the scenes, exploring alternatives, building them, and hoping the healthy and workable ones spread. And yet, it is so slow that we can become dismayed, like the worker-owned coop businesses, and public banks. How the PTB hate to be challenged!

We have spoken of these things a lot here, and so far as I can tell, at least at the ghetto side of FDL, socialism and shared power have won as a form of government. I’m tempted to link to a couple of those diaries, but instead, allow me to give you the link to the loveliest song mafr brought us, and I spun into a diary one day while you were gone. Not nuts and bolts, but as evidence that our time will come.

We are wrens, and as such, the Kings of Birds. Peace to you; we’ll get there because…we must.

Thank you, dear juliania; I’d stuck it on my word document for this post before I went for a siesta. Yes, bless Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, and all the other whistleblowers who have acted, and in many cases suffered, in service to us.

Again, Crone Brain tripped me up, and I’d thought just now when I saw your comment that I’d stuck it in this one instead. Dinnae see it. Wot???

See, if you folks would just rent me *some small portion* of your memories…

Arrg; it’s hard for me to remember to spell O’s name the way he does by now. I’ll trust you that I did it my way…

I would accept that deal you mention in a heartbeat, my friend, but with two caveats. One being that I had access to a journalist and media outlet to publish them, and two: that I would have the means to commit suicide when and if they came for me. You know some of the reasons that I cannot/could not ever go to jail, or even through the system to get there.

My life would be easy to give for my country’s ordinary people. For me, this issue is certainly one of the biggest thefts imaginable, as the peasant classes in Mexico and the global south have discovered only too well. That is the reason I support the Zapatista movement and other peasant movements around the planet. Idle No More and its affinity groups are waking again, and will be doing Turtle Island round dances with their drums calling out the Mother Planet’s heartbeat.

It is hard to believe our government would allow a foreign company to sue in court, an international court at that, to change our laws and regulations or for money damages. I suppose it only shows how far corporations and private individuals will go in quest for profit. And how far we have become absorbed into the neoliberal world view. That view is now in process of destroying a good part of Europe and now, it would appear, is ready to come here. This is really, really bad news. Stay on this one Wendy.

A sham court, really. And taxpayers end up footing the bill, as ever. Lemon Socialism: MOTUs reap the profits, citizens pay the bills. That’s the core of Investment-State agreements. Were it not so, it would seem to defy logic. The Egyptians, though, you will remember, knew what neoliberal economics were about, as well as most of the Indigenous in the nations where it was in heavy use by the IMF, World Bank. Provisions for loans mandated that when payments due…weren’t paid, austerity measures of their own design would be enacted. And who pays for austerity? You know the drill.

But these agreements are even worse; see NAFTA and the Mayans, for instance. But yeah, I’ll stay on it, and have been for a while now. Thank you for reading.

Again, one cannot help but wonder just how much Senator Warren is willing, personally to risk in seeing that the people DO know what is going on.

She took a position opposing the nomination of Obama’s candidate, Michael Froman, as new United States Trade Representative …. but failed, so far as I could see, to take Obama to task over the secrecy surrounding the issue. Umbrage with Froman is understandable, yet it is NOT Froman with whom the buck “stops” … there is but one person, one person only, who has FULL responsibility for whatever is done on his watch … and that, Elizabeth Warren and Alan Grayson is Barack Obama.

Until Grayson and Warren, and any other politicians who decry what is going on, acknowledge that fact and then act accordingly, their “resistance” is so un-threatening to power … that it amounts to little more than comfortable vexation, not even rising to a public display of reasonable and realistic aggravation, it is simply politics as usual, empty and impotent … it is an embarrassment to honest conscience and play-acting designed to lull the populace into the belief that someone actually speaks for them … too often, those who are willing to believe are simply strung along until the nasty deed is done and then, “Oh well, I (we) tried, but you know … we just couldn’t do anything … much as we wanted to. Shucks, better luck next time … and don’t forget to vote, it’s your civic duty and responsibility.”

I would dearly love to discover that I am wrong about Grayson and Warren.

So, Alan and Elizabeth, “… it’s your civic duty and responsibility.”

And it will be the measure of each of you. Not because I say so, but because those who are far younger than I will come to know who failed them … and why … even as the elite and their hangers on, laugh it up all the way to the foreign banks and their off-shored accounts …

Pattycake kabuki prevails, all empty noise and fury signifying damned little … until the whole rotten, stinking mass, collapses under the weight of its own lies and deceit.

Yves Smith had this piece up today sometime, and I confess I didn’t watch the video, but Yves clipped part of the transcript that said she voted against Froman’s confirmation on TPP grounds, and especially the secrecy. It may have been right of me to give her a nod once I saw it, but by then I was sick of all of them. And that was arguably wrong of me.

But thank you for causing me to make the confession, DW; I’d forgotten I’d even seen the piece until you’d mentioned it.

And thank you for this one, Elizabeth Warren; please don’t keep believing that the WOT is a real thing.

followed a burgeoning chorus of Congresss-Critters (whose collective national approval rating of Congress being 10% in recent polls)

I assume this plan will be passed after the election not because its classified because of anything in it that can harm our troops but because it can harm Congress if the details are known before the election.
So lets demonize the plan Wendy take a page from the GOP and not let facts stand in our way. Lets just say the plan will cost jobs, hurt the economy and make the rich richer as the poor lose jobs and have lower wages from opening our economy to low wage competition.
In the absence of facts past behavior becomes a tool to predict future behavior. We infer the existence of black holes not because we see them we see stars sucked into them.
We theorize what a black hole can do like bend light and we see it happen.
I predict with no evidence the Sun will rise Wednesday just based on past action.
I predict TAFTA will cost people jobs, lower wages for American workers and make the rich richer just based on the pattern of past trade deals.
If we make a big enough stink now we can make Congress leery about this before the election.
We need to ask House Tea Baggers if they support the Obama Trade deal to cut jobs and hurt the economy.
We need to ask Blue Dog Dems the same question. When they and the WH respond nobody knows whats in the trade deal we ask them to point to a trade deal that helped the American economy. We need to ask them why this trade deal is different. We need to ask them why should we believe you now when all the past trade deals Congress has approved under bush and Obama have resulted in no jobs or even less jobs.
The World is not Flat its just the average American getting Flattened.

Congress has a 10% approval rating interesting we can expect the party with the most seats to defend to lose seats we can expect the Blue Dogs in Purple seats to lose even more seats.
Sure the GOP is trying their best to lose the most seats next election by pissing off Hispanics, 10 years to become a citizen is weak tea that won’t help anyone. Women voters the latest anti abortion bills the GOP is pushing seem designed to make Hilary a shoe in. Cutting SS another thing we can expect after the election will hurt the GOP with their base.
But right now the economy is still the biggest issue and if the Dems mess this up I doubt Nancy will stay as House minority Leader.
Without a Blue Dog Dem as Minority Leader Obama will find the next few years of his Presidency hell since the GOP has shown no sign of being willing to deal with him no matter how much he surrenders.

The CBO might score Trade Adjustment Assistance, but I don’t know if either of these agreements would have that as part of the final agreements. Come to think of it, I don’t know when those provisions were added to NAFTA or any of the others.

Obomba had been shooting (pun intended) to finalize the TTP by Nov. or so, but it’s been said that Japan’s decision to sign onto it may slow it down. Speculation by the Guardian was that the TTIP/TAFTA could take two years, and may now be even more complicated by the NSA info and the tech/privacy issues. Our country seems to value privacy less than some (not Great Britain).

Your electoral cogitations left me in the dust, Things; I seldom pay attention any longer. But if the facts meant more than propaganda and spin, we wouldn’t be in the fix we’re in. Global Trade Watch (and the new joint report) can give you chapter and verse on better trade balances *and* value with nations we *don’t have agreements with than those we *do*. I assume they’re trying to be accurate. You might want to poke around their site; plenty of links.

But good on you for trying to think through a longer term strategy, but there’s probably not that much time left.

Sorry to be late replying, DW – and lovely to get the chance; I’ve missed you! I only read a bit of that article, so I could be offbase, will go read it more in the morning when my head is sharper. I thought at least the start sounded a lot like what Richard Wolff has said as far as the capitalist inevitable way of being from the ’70′s on. Not sure I completely buy that as the American way, though it might be the slippery slope.

I like Naomi Klein’s optimism that people can learn from shock experiences. Boy, do I hope we don our cleats as it’s gonna be a steep, steep learning curve from the looks of it. And somebody better be driving in the spikes already (I’m not a mountaineer so the imagery is probably all a-kilter, what the hey.)

But really, what do I know? No professorship has been bestowed upon me, though I did grow up when the subject of history was quaintly called ‘social studies.’ In that more peaceful time, which our kids and the children of so many others have seen very little of for sure. Hard not to be dragged down by that when it is our ‘leaders’ who are responsible for most of it.

But I digress – I’m glad to see people paying attention to these ‘trade’ deals, and with the NSA knowing everything everyone is communicating, what could go wrong?

However, until we’ve some sense of our destination, that is the society we seek to build (or rebuild) how may we even begin to plan the excursion?

That is why my broken record keeps repeating, “What do we imagine, think, discern, or require (for that is the proper word if the survival and thriving of the human species is what is actually desired), what does our “hoped” for destination look like?. Frankly, there may be some question about that. Do we really want fully participatory democracy, or is that too “hard”? Do we “prefer” a “compassionate” hierarchy, some offshoot of the current “merit system”? Do we wish to lionize the individual or do we prefer a stable, sustainable civil society in which the devil does NOT “take” the hindmost? Or would we, if we are honest, prefer not to think of these things at all? I speak here of foundational principles and that they be agreed upon, else civil society is but a sham. I have suggested, numerous times, that a functioning rule of law is fundamental to civil society, yet so too is the ability of society to protect itself from internal depredation, something that “history” makes very plain has NEVER been seriously and intentionally followed to its necessary conclusions … even though Jefferson and others sought to include such protections they were shouted down by the money people, by the fictitious persons brigade, by the “this is not a democracy it is a business” crowd.

Perhaps, until we examine where “we” have “been”, what has been done in our names, in the name of the people, from the very inception of this nation, the wars, the genocides, the “manifest destiny”, the “American Century” and the brutal and brutalizing consequence of empire, we cannot begin to even know who we are or what we have become … a society deliberately manipulated on so very many levels and most susceptible, now, to unreasoning fear … even as the ruling classes seek ever larger portions of this nation’s “wealth” and more and more “control” of … everything.

We must look at what we are.

And, we cannot successfully imagine or build a future unless we are willing to ponder what we wish to become.

I see little appetite to do either.

My sense is that most USians are waiting for someone else to do the heavy lifting … and there is the reality that our educational system, quite intentionally, has become an instrument that seeks to preclude such notions as I have presented, rather seeking conformity and a willingness to merely be “replacements” for the worn-out parts (individual human beings) that empire must have if it is to reign supreme, above criticism, beyond meaningful change, and to the benefit, primarily, of a precious few …

Ah well, a few more shocks might do the trick.

For, at some point, few will be able to deny the deliberate, intentional destruction of civil society and what that MUST mean … unless they profit from that destruction.

Interesting times.

Quite a “test” for humanity.

An opportunity for courage, tolerance, understanding, and reason, as well as for unfettered greed and essentially limitless power premised upon brutal oppression of the human spirit and what it means to be alive.

Rather stark choices in which there is, it must be understood, no realistic nor accessible “middle ground”.

People are going to have to choose and take the consequences of that choice.

If there is one thing which current-day USians are loath to do, it is to choose, for many would prefer that others do their thinking for them, as that is what they have been assiduously taught through their lives and “rewarded” for doing.

I remain convinced that there is reason for hope, yet admit that such conviction is intuitive quite as much discerned from a lifelong observation of how people, in groups, in society, decide what to do or not do.

We’ve quite a ways to go and had best get started soon.

I’ll hold the pitons, juliania, if you’ll swing the hammer to drive them firmly and usefully in …

Holy shit, Things. These aren’t designed to be in America’s interest, if by that you mean ‘everyday Americans’. They’re designed as multinational command and control profiteering rules for ‘trade’. Wherein: the corporations hold the power, make the profits, screw the 99% in the signatory nations…what’s not to like?

So the adherents just run with the propaganda of increased GDP, loads of new jobs, yada, yada. Shoot, everyone is giddy over TAFTA in the MSM, and mostly online. Even read a piece at HuffPo that was soooo in favor of it. The ‘even’ meant that I’d even read there after Giggling for news.

Added: Remember, too, that the joint report only concerned investor-state language analysis, not all of the language being negotiated. Dunno if it would help, but I stuck a few of my fdl diaries on the TPP into one for access at Cafe Babylon. The categories feature makes it easy to find ones on different subject areas.

This piece by Norman Pollack is a knockout: Militarizing Capitalism‘. It’s not OT to this post because of the discussions about what our society and government have become, and which roads are open, which have seemingly been blocked as far as the degree to which we have self-kettled in so many directions; he cites the underpinnings of ‘self-pacification’, which may be at the root of what some believe Snowden’s revelations were designed to complete in a burgeoning police state.

So we will indeed need to encourage each other in how not to submit to fear implied in all of this, and hope that so many others keep writing and speaking out that it overwhelms the systems they’ve designed to trap us and keep us silent and being good little productive consumer cogs in the Machine.

“The US is now notorious in international circles for regime change. Bad enough, but it gets worse: The US, internally, perhaps as the necessary or ratifying condition which makes broad-gauged intervention, including regime change, possible (and the implicit goal of foreign policy), has taken the qualitative jump into the culture-molding process of the social management of personality. We are reaching the point of no return as a nation, assigning to privatization much of the business of data mining (and it emphatically is a business) wherein our private lives are stripped as nearly bare as possible, the information routed to government for purposes of surveillance, and to private business—often the same information—so as to stimulate wants and sell goods and services.

Crass, yes! The convergence of militarism and consumerism, nay, one better, mutual reinforcement of the two as the formula for sustaining global hegemony and capitalistic growth alike, brings us to the present day, in which surveillance + privatization = the militarization of capitalism, the former keeping us in line (i.e., social discipline through tactics of fear, in order to engender self-pacification), and the latter, giving us a depth of commitment to property as a moral law unto itself legitimating capital accumulation by any and all means (i.e., intervention, regime change, foreign conquest). Is this gross exaggeration? Not if one takes Snowden’s revelations seriously and weighs the activities of the National Security Agency (except for turf wars, inseparable from those of the CIA, FBI, and other assorted intelligence units, chiefly, of the military services) as the direct channel into the lives and minds of Americans—and, we see, foreign nationals—providing the conditions for totalitarianism where free choice is nonexistent and dictated from above.”

He is, and I will share it, and you should feel free to, as well. ‘The social managing of personality’ was such a new thought to me, and I hope he might expand on it sometime soon.

Also, please do come to Cafe-Babylon.net; rc would sure love to say howdy, I’m sure. Another port in the storm. ;~)

This that you wrote above:

“People are going to have to choose and take the consequences of that choice.

If there is one thing which current-day USians are loath to do, it is to choose, for many would prefer that others do their thinking for them, as that is what they have been assiduously taught through their lives and “rewarded” for doing.”

…is of course why many fear that when the next horrors arrive, many will submit to the first self-anointed/appointed demagogue who comes along, offering the American Dream (but don’t read the fine print).

Suppose Alan Grayson, a member of Congress, went public with the specifics? Would he be considered “too big to hold accountable” aka Mr. lying to Congress Holder? Where is the line drawn between the big bank CEOs and Attorney General and president and others who will never see any downside to illegal, immoral actions and the regular guys? Which side of the line are members of Congress on?

Talk is easy. Grayson is basically a big fake, like Cory Booker and other other progressive idols.

Alan Grayson proved who he champions by voting for Michael Froman’s confirmation as US Trade Rep.

But yes: what would have happened to him? He made it easy, sadly, and likely never even imagined what might happen, including…not much. Ron Wyden saw some text, but didn’t make hay out of being cute (not to mention fund-raising on the issue). Bah. MisLeadership Class, as Glenn Ford calls it, although he has special venom for the Black MisLeadership Class.

The outlines of this per Wendy’s link is disturbing. I don’t know how intrusive NAFTA is but if it resembles what is going down on TPP it is bad. Elizabeth Warren has also weighed in on this and the secrecy surrounding it. You can understand some confidentiality but this seems almost silly. Classified? Oh com’on now. I agree with her. It appears we are not allowed to know. But Houston they have a problem. Leaks. Too many people know about it. Unfortunately, it appears there is little we can do about it. What a mess. Another continuing scandal.

The leak to the TPP language was in 2011; no one knows what it looks like now, except Grayson’s three chapters. This post outlines some of it, and has plenty of links inside. Not a long read.

There is a reason it’s secret/classified whatever: people would scream bloody murder if they knew the implications. (Not that the Prez or most in Congress listen to us, but some might worry about re-election. Maybe.)

Yes I saw some in the links you had, some were in 2012 if I remember. I agree we would scream bloody murder. But do they really think if they keep it secret that will shut us up? It’s going to come out. Obama has himself in a no win situation now it looks like. Scandals are popping up all over. I don’t understand it. Why does he or anyone want this crap?

I can’t speak for the people, DW, but I can now claim to have read the article at the link you gave at #24.

Some parts of it in particular struck me quite forcefully, the first being Mr. Parker’s claim that “Americans were no less greedy, ignorant, selfish and violent…and no more generous, fair minded and idealistic…” in 1978. Not picking on that actual date but just in general, my feeling is that they were both less and more in those categories. My feeling is that there has been a concerted effort made by the ptb to make ‘more’ and ‘less’ out of the American character – and this truly is something that can happen to a certain degree, as Aristotle tells us. Habit is a powerful motivator. We have been habituated – to war, to double dealing, to sleaze in a way we had not yet been in the ’70s. And yes, greed has been in every aspect of our culture, in ways it had not been back then. Even if we ourselves weren’t greedy – that was the path laid before us, no choice.

You, DW, speak of hope, and I have it too. Because despite this barrage of habitual crud, young people today, without the education or the social fabric you and I had back then – know all of this is very wrong. Look at Brazil; look at our own Occupy. These people are truly wonderful because they are shedding the trappings of habit. Maybe unsuccessfully as far as being beaten down, but they show it isn’t just a cultural thing, and in that Parker is correct – there is a human nature that does not change.

We want a rule of law. A true and sacred rule of law, not a sham where the rich can steal from the poor and from the earth we cherish. So, something will have to be done to resurrect that. I don’t buy it that you have to have a Great Depression to get a New Deal. You have to have recognition of the falsity and the lies, a calling out and a climbing.

Parker says:

“…It is no wonder that more and more Americans believe the game is rigged. It is no wonder that they buy houses they cannot afford and then walk away from the mortgage when they can no longer pay. Once the social contract is shredded, once the deal is off, only suckers still play by the rules…”

Only the first sentence of that is right. He’s wrong on the rest. My God, that’s not what happened in the mortgage crisis! There might have been a few that gamed the system, but most were suckered in! Most thought the social contract was still in place, or that somehow they would find the means. But it wasn’t, and they couldn’t. They were being played – was it great to get turfed out?

No, Mr. Parker, your last bits are disingenuous – you don’t get off scotfree tagging Americans with the shady dealings the rich had set in place. Mindfully duplicit shady dealings!

I think the Guardian put that piece up to counter what is happening to an enlightened public. They are not angels there – maybe that was the bargain they had with the ptb. We need to choose our alpine course very carefully. Be as innocent as lambs, but wise as serpents.

The social contract needs to be reclaimed and reinstated. ( End of rant.)

I came to that article independently this morning, wendydavis, and loved it as you do. Thanks for putting it on our record here. Ralph Nader in a piece also at counterpunch says that it should rather be called ‘corporatization’ than privatization, and that’s something he’s fought his entire life, choosing to remain the outsider in the game you must corporatize to win. These are our teachers, the ones who say ‘it isn’t so and it doesn’t have to be.’

Thank you for this wonderful diary – it’s receding here now, but over at your site we can continue on. And I think we should.

(Something felt very wrong about Parker’s piece to me. Made my forehead wrinkle.) Just remembered: it reminded me a bit of the piece Chris Hedges wrote about the 60′s, skewering the activists, mocking us…and he wasn’t even in the goddam country at the time. Yech. He can sure get my goat sometimes. Other times, he’s great…

I hadn’t taken the time to read Nader’s piece yet, but kgb used to say the same thing: ‘We should always call it corporitization’. Yes, indeed we should. I have been loading links onto the one from two days ago, but realized they maybe should have gone on my first one on Snowden’s video.

Ack; we’ll get it sorted. Stuff is just breakin’ so fast; i email myself four and five links at a time lately. ;~)

It would have been damned patriotic of him to have done so. Guess this post didn’t whistle him in. And he voted for Michael Froman’s confirmation. Glad to have you read and comment, greenwarrior. Hope things are going well with your worthy projects.

I am distracted by the personal this week in my own little piece of nature. The 100 year old live oak shading my whole front yard had all its leaves turn brown in the last few days. First tree guy suspects chemicals (eg the neighbor’s Round-Up) and thinks the tree may live. I’ve left a message for the seriously expert tree guy and await his call back and visit.

On the Happy Solstice note. Skinny dipping with a group of women this morning, then potluck breakfast.

And a lantern parade along the creek tonight by the street band Minor Mishaps Marching Bank. I have swum and tonight will dance at all the performance stops.

No lantern. I got glowstick bracelets for me and the friend I’m going with. And I got her a red glowstick wand and I’ll have a blue one. And my sparkling colorful tropical lei. I am READY!

Thank you DWB … ask bluedot12 about thoughts on Jill Stein sometime… bluedot12 has said in a comment directed at me here at The Lake that I had hate drooling from the side of my mouth in my FDL comments — I do not think bluedot12 was entitled to be say that #1 and #2 it was/is not true — a apology bluedot12?

…that being if you want to mix it up with the BoggBots you can expect a range of juvenile taunts and brandishing of O/D zealot one liners,( supposedly hilarious )( not seeing it ) and multiple put downs and not really persuasive attempts at political discourse. I seldom take the time anymore after being here at FDL for several years to browse comment threads at The Bogg Bunker being they seem to be downward spirals of diatribed spittle and tag team WWF styled simpleton insult tosses. Not to forget the serial shank self measuring and pissing contests.

When bluedot12 took a comment swipe at me in FDL comments it was not at The Bogg Lair ( I would have expected such BS there ) but on a DSWrights comments thread. I was not aware of what this bluedot12 was prior to May 23,2013. Now I am.

Don’t really give a rats butt about what goes on over in The Bogg Bunker but seeing how bd12 is placing comments here on a wd comments thread I would expect bd12 to come clean.

It is not about agreeing/disagreeing ( that happens here at The Lake everyday ) but is about being civil and courteous. Having a bad day? OK… but lets see some reflection showing up too.

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